


Some Fucked-Up Kind Of Okay

by Recourse



Category: Life Is Strange (Video Game)
Genre: F/F, LSD, Recreational Drug Use, Vaguely lisvn au, domestic sort of
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-23
Updated: 2016-10-23
Packaged: 2018-08-24 06:11:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,126
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8360467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Recourse/pseuds/Recourse
Summary: It shouldn’t feel right. It shouldn’t take two and a half tabs of acid to feel right in a room in her own damned apartment. But these moments are what Victoria grasps for and holds onto.





	

**Author's Note:**

> "domestic amberchase is a xanax-induced coma dream" - me, not very long ago

It smells good.

It always smells good in Rachel’s room.

Incense colors the air and swirls in incandescent patterns before Victoria’s eyes, colors shifting in the sunset light filtering through her hipster-ass beaded curtains. Victoria wanders across her floor, barefoot, kneading the carpet between her toes. Thinking. Listening.

Rachel’s music is garbage. Anyone knows that. People come in and groan at her hippie soundtrack and she laughs and she excuses herself with all sorts of things. She can always make you forgive her.

There’s no bad way to look, in here. The sunset over Portland through the windows and the beads. The popcorn ceiling dotted with a kid’s array of glow-in-the-dark stars. The walls covered in Rachel’s posters, Rachel’s love for cheesy occult crap shining through clear as day but it always seems charming coming from her. The knick-knacks covering her dresser, the burning censer. And just over there...

Rachel lies on her back, wearing very little. Needing very little.

Victoria knows that this is what it’s all for.

Every argument. No, screw that, they’re always fights. Sniping. Needling. Rachel bringing home girls, guys, because they’re not together, not really, Victoria always says. Victoria bringing home girls, because someone needs to find her a better way to live. It never clicks. Not like this.

It shouldn’t feel right. It shouldn’t take two and a half tabs of acid to feel right in a room in her own damned apartment. But these moments are what Victoria grasps for and holds onto.

“Hey,” Rachel says to the air. “Come over here.”

Victoria looks her over. “Why?”

“Cuz I asked?”

All right. Works.

Victoria heads over to the bed, and Rachel shifts. “Lie down with me.”

‘Cuz she asked.

Victoria lies down, her head beside Rachel’s, upside-down. “Mm. Yeah. Good,” Rachel murmurs, a dreamy smile making its way across her face.

“What’s good?” Victoria asks, because she can never help herself. Rachel’s aloof-pixie-girl act does _not_ work on her, dammit. Except when it does. Except when it feels right.

“Just thinking about the picture this would make,” Rachel hums to herself. “Put the camera right up...there,” she adds, making a little frame with her hands. “You n’ me.”

Victoria clams up. They’re never in the same shot, not ever. Rachel’s the model, Victoria the photographer. That’s how this works. Photographs in this apartment are taken for professional reasons. Victoria hasn’t updated her headshot in a good long while.

“Can you see it?” Rachel asks, turning over on her side, waiting for Victoria to match the motion. Her smile’s manic, a crazed grin, and she’s jumping with giggles before Victoria can stop herself from matching that too.

Victoria _can._ She _can_ see it.

Rachel reaches her hand over, and they link pinkies because Rachel likes to do that, says she likes how it feels when you push against the ligaments or what the fuck _ever._ They pull against each other until they settle somewhere between them.

Victoria closes her eyes. Her muscles slacken and she breathes out. She opens her eyes. The popcorn ceiling is melting. That’s all right.

They stay like that as the light begins to fade from the room. There’s no need to move. Only when Rachel’s stereo has traveled into that low valley between songs does she speak up again.

“Why don’t we just get married?” she asks. Like it’s nothing.

Victoria sits up, looking over her shoulder as Rachel gets herself upright, crosses her legs underneath her.

“ _What?_ ” Victoria asks. Laughter’s building up in her throat, because honestly, Rachel.

“I mean...” Rachel sighs. “You ‘n me. Ever since one stupid photo assignment in high school. Why don’t we just get married?”

Rachel’s the model, Victoria the photographer. That’s how this works. The sex, the kissing, the renting an apartment together and living together and claiming this is not a relationship and it’s an open relationship when that lie is laid bare, that’s all surface dressing. Victoria knows she’s just here to prop Rachel up. That’s why she’s always trying to escape, right? Bringing home better girls. Girls who want to commit. Girls who honestly want to be with her instead of being trapped in this highly unprofessional professional partnership.

This is what goes through Victoria’s mind in a split-second. What comes out of her mouth is, “You’re literally on drugs.”

“So the fuck what?” Rachel asks exasperatedly, flinging herself back on the pillows. “So the fuck what,” she repeats to herself. “What am I looking for?”

“What?” Victoria repeats that word often, around Rachel. Especially like this.

“‘n those people I bring home. What am I hoping to get from them I don’t from you?” Rachel swallows nothing. “You capture me like no one else does. You _get_ me. And whatever I’m looking for...” She sighs. “I never get it. So what are _you_ looking for?”

A way out. A way to think she hasn’t fallen in love with this objectively awful specimen of humanity, this manipulative cheesy no-taste beautiful good-smelling whatever the fuck she is. God. Why does Victoria want that so badly? Would it be so bad? It’s not like she’s the first to fall for Rachel Amber.

The problem is she has the feeling she wouldn’t ever be the last.

What comes out of her mouth is, “A way out of the lease.”

Rachel grabs a stuffed animal and throws it at her. “Shut up. I’m being serious.”

“So am I.”

Their eyes meet, and Victoria’s losing herself in hazel the way she often does. Rachel’s eyes tell stories by themselves, make photos by themselves, have separate modeling careers of their own. Rachel’s lip quivers.

“Do you really want out so badly?”

_Does she?_

The question reverberates in Victoria’s mind, and she shares Rachel’s sentiment, throwing herself back on the covers. If Victoria wanted out, she could do it. Rachel wouldn’t stop her, if Victoria made it clear she was serious. She’d work through the lease thing, if Victoria pushed. She’d accept that Victoria was finally over this.

The problem is always that Victoria’s not over this.

The problem is that Victoria fears she never will be.

And Rachel’s eyes are pleading, begging. She shifts herself, lying up against Victoria, staring at her face, waiting for anything.

And Victoria only has one answer.

“No.”

And then they’re both laughing, because, holy shit, what a stupid fucking way to spend two years, and they’re laughing because Rachel's straddling Victoria and kissing her over and over, and they’re laughing because their skin tingles and their minds wander and their hands wander further than that still. They laugh because everything is stupid and they laugh because the world is wonderful.

“Why don’t we just get married?” Rachel asks again.

And really.

Why don’t they?

**Author's Note:**

> written at 4:30 am on the comedown from an acid trip on my birthday.
> 
> hi. i'm gloria. nice to meet you.


End file.
